Can Glee Club Reduce Dropout Rates?

By Kristina Rizga

Editors’ Note: This education dispatch is part of a new ongoing
series reported from Mission High School, where education writer
Kristina Rizga is known to students as “Miss K.” Click here to see
all of Mojo’s recent education coverage, or follow The Miss K Files
on Twitter or with this RSS Feed.

It’s 8 a.m., and Mission High School choir director Steven
Hankle is about to start class. Soul and hip-hop tunes play softly
in the background while students trickle in. A young Latina girl
pulls her friend up from the chair, and the two dance for a few
minutes; an African American girl sings along. Sandwiched between
two pianos, the 29-year-old teacher is writing out a holiday
concert rehearsal schedule: “Deck the Halls,” “This Christmas,” a
Latin remake of “Stand by Me,” and “La Bamba.”

Before Hankle became a teacher at Mission High in 2009, the
school hadn’t had a music program in three years. This really
bothered Principal Eric Guthertz. “There are countless studies that
show that students who are engaged in the arts perform better,”
Guthertz says. “On the other hand, music grades don’t count in the
test scores measured by the state.” But after the school’s staff
and parents hired a music teacher, the fledgling choir took off.
Student singers perfomed in front of 2,500 people at Davies Hall in
San Francisco. Test scores shot up—especially among African
American and Latino students—and dropout rates declined from 32 to
8 percent in a single year. Principal Guthertz credits the music
choir in part for this success.